It has only been four months since the first DirectX 11 video cards hit the market using GPUs from ATI, the graphics division of AMD. The Radeon HD 5800 series using the Cypress core not only featured exceptional performance, but support for the new standard. Video cards using the new chip sold out almost immediately, and ATI's 5800 sales have been constrained by TSMC's production problems until early December. Supply has risen since then and 5800 series Radeons are now readily available.

The company released the performance mainstream Radeon HD 5700 series in October using a new 40nm chip codenamed Juniper. The smaller chip meant that yields were higher and prices were lower, and many gamers upgrading during the holiday shopping season picked up one of those cards.

On the other hand, the Radeon HD 5970 has been sold out since launch. The most powerful video card in the world has been highly sought after since it was launched in November. ATI has told DailyTech that there should be more 5970s hitting the market soon now that there are more Cypress chips available.

The company also launched its DirectX 11 Mobility Radeon lineup yesterday, with a full range of discrete GPU options ranging from the enthusiast to the mainstream. Those GPUs will be mostly paired up with new 32nm Intel Arrandale CPUs.

DailyTech was at an AMD event last night where the company disclosed that it had sold over 2 million DirectX 11 GPUs, forming a pretty large product base for DX11 game developers that is still steadily growing. A specially commissioned Radeon cake was the highlight of the night.

The ATI Radeon HD 5870 also won the CES 2010 Best of Innovations award in the Computer Hardware category.

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How are they overpriced? if they are being sold as fast as they are being made, then the price seems fine to me. You don't understand that the value of something is what people are willing to pay for it, not some arbitrary number made up by someone not willing to pay said price. Seeing the state of AMD's financials the last couple of years, the longer they can keep the price up, the better.

The 5850 is overpriced according to AMD/ATI. $250 is MSRP. While they may be getting some additional profit, it's the distributors and e-tailers who are making the real extra dough. It's a pretty simple effect-of-business, if something costs me an extra $5, I'm gonna tack on $8.50. By the time the product makes it to the end user, everyone in the supply chain has added $50 total to the final price.

Good point; I think your alluding to the anti capitalist nature of many who want something for nothing while the goose that lays the golden egg goes out of business. However another post states AMD is not making the profit from the overcharged cards, but retailers are. In the end it will be the retailers who have to cut down the prices to match a future Nvidia GPU leaving AMD to continue to make the exact same profit from their MSRP. It would be bad press for AMD to raise the MSRP after a product launch and give anti AMD peeps out there ammo to point fingers and say "See they are screwing us" which is actually what the retailers are doing now. AMD/ATI just underestimated the success of this GPU launch is all.

I think you are confusing price and value - the two concepts are not interchangeable. It is possible for something to be invaluable, but worthless - and it is likewise possible for something to be hugely expensive but to have no value. Price is objective; value is subjective.

You can't tell someone that "your view of (subjective thing) is wrong." It's like telling someone that hating the color green is wrong. It's valid; if not intelligent.

That said; while price is objective to consumers, it is subject to market forces. Artificial scarcity (caused by, let's say, manufacturing difficults with TSMC's 40nano process) can artificially affect price - making it possible for something to be priced high, even though all of them are selling.

Furthermore, with the EOL of the 4800 series (I believe there are no more than a few 4870/4890's available on the market) means that buyers in that performance segment have no choice but to pay more. You can obstinately demand that something is worth what person X is willing to pay for it - and from the perspective of the market you are right. But it's not a very informed view of the market or economics.

My subjective feel is that this card is definitely worth 250-265, however its value is not worth 309. That is the point.

Also, how you guys tell "flying off the shelves" for a product, that was stocked qty 5 units per retailer for example, and they managed to sell all 5 of them within a week. Pay attention - not quantity 1 million per week. Using same logic, Ferraris are hot product and fly off the shelves, because they are always sold with mark up?

That's a pretty stupid point. First of all, every retailer sold out of them in five or ten minutes after they got any stock at all until midway through December. Second of all, selling 2 million this quickly is a feat in and of itself, not factoring in supply problems.

"Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment -- same piece of hardware -- paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be." -- Steve Ballmer